Al-Qaeda has chosen Ayman al-Zawahiri as its new leader following Osama bin
Laden's death in a US commando raid last month, according to a statement
apparently issued by the movement’s general command.

The Egyptian surgeon was al-Qaeda’s number two for more than a decade and was widely expected to take on the top role when bin Laden was shot dead by US Navy Seals in Pakistan.

“The general command of al-Qaeda announces, after consultations, the appointment of Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri as head of the group,” said the statement which was posted on an Islamist website.

A group statement later said: "We seek with the aid of God to call for the religion of truth and incite our nation to fight ... by carrying out jihad against the apostate invaders ... with their head being crusader America and its servant Israel, and whoever supports them."

Al-Zawahiri, 59, issued a eulogy for bin Laden last week saying al-Qaeda’s leader had terrified the US when he was alive and would continue to do so in death.

He appeared in a white Arab robe and turban, a Kalashnikov at his side, in the 28-minute video posted on jihadist online forum.

“We will pursue the jihad until we expel the invaders from Muslim lands,” he said.

He is the son of an upper middle class Egyptian family of doctors and scholars but went on to found Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which eventually merged with al-Qaeda in 1998.

Today he carries a $25m (£15m) price on his head and is believed to run al-Qaeda operations from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.

Like bin Laden, Zawahiri, a qualified surgeon, has been hiding ever since the United States declared its war on terror after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Now the United States' most wanted man, he was jailed for three years in Egypt for militancy and was implicated in the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981, and a 1997 massacre of tourists in Luxor.

Facing a death sentence, he left Egypt in the mid-1980s initially for Saudi Arabia, but soon headed for Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar where the resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was based, and then to Afghanistan, where he joined forces with bin Laden.

Noman Benotman, a senior analyst at the Quilliam foundation, and who was a close associate of Zawahiri between the early 1990s and 2000, said his appointment was a "natural move" by al-Qaeda.

"However it is surprising that al-Qaeda took such a long time to announce Zawahiri as the group’s new leader. This is a sign that there may have been disputes and conflicts within al-Qaeda, including over his leadership, that Zawahiri needed to resolve before formally taking over," he said.

"Zawahiri’s first step as leader will be to try to decontaminate the group’s reputation in the Muslim world. Ever since the Iraq war, al-Qaeda has been mistrusted by many Muslims and even by other hardline Islamist groups for its killing of Muslim civilians. Zawahiri’s first priority will be to restore the al-Qaeda brand."

He added that he will also try to reposition al-Qaeda in the Middle East in order to take advantage of the Arab Spring.